Milton Hershey Built a Town

In my previous life I was a teacher. My first classes were a first and second grade mixed class with whom I was with for two fun years. During my second year of teaching I did a lesson plan on Milton Hershey and "The Town That Chocolate Built". After our day at Hershey I was telling Maya about it and she was intrigued, probably because I said it involved making a pretend chocolate bar! Since this was a project geared for first and second graders I had to do some revamping of the project!

1. To begin the kids decorated their own chocolate bar wrappers. I used a template from a teaching book I had but you can easily take a piece of computer paper and cut it into quarters. Then fold one of the quarters into thirds to form a "wrapper".

2. As the kids were decorating their wrappers I gave the kids a mini lesson on Hershey, Pennsylvania:

Milton Hershey built his chocolate factory in 1903. He had a vision that the workers in his factory would have a nice place to live around where they worked. He built schools, banks, stores, an amusement park, a zoo and other places that make it a nice place to live. The town, now known as Hershey, Pennsylvania, is a place people come to visit. People see how chocolate is made, ride the rides at the park and eat at the nearby restaurants.

3. When they finished decorating they got their "chocolate" which was a piece of brown construction paper that had been cut in half. I suggested they draw the "town that Hershey built" but they did their own thing. Maya used the rest of the worksheet and practiced copying words that were related to chocolate and Zachary drew a picture of a chocolate bar.

4. After the picture was finished they glued the aluminum foil to the back of their picture.

5. Next they folded it in half twice, aluminum foil side facing out, to fit in the "wrapper". Then they wrapped it up and they had their own pretend chocolate bar!